Pride Month: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Today begins Pride Month, so let’s listen to some Tchaikovsky.

It is not actually conclusively known if Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was gay or not, but most biographers and historians have concluded, from the nature and the durations of the various relationships in his life, that he was. Sadly, late 19th-century Imperial Russia was not a good time for being homosexual, and it’s certainly known that Tchaikovsky, for all his artistic success, struggled for all of his 53 years through a life full of melancholy, loneliness, and outright depression. He married once, and it was a calamity that was annulled within just a few months. Most of the important relationships in his life were with men, though the nature of those relationships can only be guessed at from the contents of letters and contemporary accounts, many of which were suppressed by various Russian and later Soviet governments. Even in death, Tchaikovsky has been forced into a closeted existence.

Tchaikovsky’s death itself may, or may not, have arisen from his tortured melancholia. The facts seem to be that, in the midst of a cholera epidemic, Tchaikovsky went out with some friends and at some point drank unboiled water. He was dead of cholera just days later…at least, as far as the official accounting of his passing goes. Some wonder if he drank the unboiled water intentionally, or if he actually purposely poisoned himself in an act of suicide. The truth of this will never be known, either. It does seem to be the case that Tchaikovsky’s sad life is an artifact of a time when queerness was held in contempt and disdain. Have we made progress? Yes. Have we made enough? Oh, most certainly not.

But at least Tchaikovsky’s music remains! Here is his Symphony No. 5, my favorite of his six symphonies, with its stormy first movement, its stunningly meditative and heartbreaking second, its graceful third, and its epic finale that in the end feels like sun breaking through clouds. This performance isn’t the best sonically, but the quality of the playing (by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1974) and the interpretation (by conductor Leonard Bernstein) is simply amazing. Of course, Bernstein himself was a figure whose sexuality has been the subject of much speculation…but that’s another post.